Osita Okechukwu, chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to recapitalise and nationalise the electricity sector to boost the country’s economic growth and industrial development.
Speaking in an interview with newsmen on Sunday, Okechukwu described the privatisation of the electricity sector as a disaster.
He furthered that privatising the sector would increase energy prices, cause job losses, and result in factory closures.
According to him, the only way to save the sector and the country’s economy is to recapitalise and restructure it.
Okechukwu urged Tinubu to borrow a leaf from Albert Einstein’s maxim, that it would amount to insanity to continue expending public funds along profiteering “oligopolies” and hope to get commensurate electricity output.
His words: “Mr President, we are in an economic crisis like the UK after the 2nd World War, it took the Labour Party to strengthen their economy and nationalised fundamental industries like electricity and their electricity sector generated 30,000 megawatts in less than 20 years.
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“Why can’t we recapitalise with $30 billion to generate 30,000 megawatts in less than 10 years under public ownership?
“Margaret Thatcher came in the 1980s and privatised and the cry for public ownership is back in the UK as neoliberal policies most times fuel poverty and throw thousands out of jobs.”
He noted that when they warned that the Peoples Democratic Party-led Federal Government was less transparent in the privatization process, where neither Foreign Direct Investment flowed in nor foreign investors participated, nobody listened.
He opined that the chickens had come home to roost as the available financial records gazetted the billions the government poured in to bail out the stagnated DISCOs, the country could only generate less than 4,000 megawatts.
When reminded that there was an improvement in the electricity supply contrary to his postulation, he disagreed vehemently, saying that what happened was akin to April Fool.
“Are we not ashamed that after expending $16 billion on NIPP, and uncountable billions of dollars afterward, 200 million people ration less than 4,000 megawatts of electricity?
“Mr President, please let’s muster the socioeconomic will and borrow $30 billion to generate 30,000 megawatts under public ownership in less than 10 years,” he added.
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